
U B B £ R 

JI Wonder Story\ 







Jin IntroductorjrJVote ^^ 

E have undertaken to print this 
and succeeding booklets, telling 
you how rubber is grown, gath- 
ered and then made useful, for 
this reason: 

The United States Rubber Company, as 
the largest rubber manufacturer in the 
world, wants the coming generations of our 
country to have some understanding of the 
importance of rubber in our every day life. 

We hope to interest and inform you. 
We believe the rubber industry will be better 
off if the future citizens of our country know 
more about it. 




President. 




DEC 10 1919 



COPyRIGHT 1919 BY 
UNITED STATES RUBBER COMPANY 




>Clft558310 




RUBBER 




CHAOTEItl 
DISCOVERY 

ROMANCE 



AVE you ever heard how a game of ball 
changed the daily life of the entire civilized 
world? It was no National League game 
played by big salaried stars, with thousands 
of people looking on, nor was it written up on 
the sporting pages of great dailies. ^ It was 
played on a sandy beach more than four hiui- 
dred years ago, by some half-naked Indian 
boys who little knew the hig game they were 
playing. 
You would have but one answer if you were asked, "What did Columbus 
discover in 1492?" But what he discovered on his second voyage is not 
quite so easy to say. He was looking for gold when he landed on the island- 
of Hayti on that second trip, so his eyes were blind to the importance of the 
simple child's play which he saw on the sand between the palm trees and 
the sea. Instead of the coveted gold, he took back to Europe, just as 
curiosities, some strange black balls given him by these Indian boys, which, 
they told him, were made from the hardened juice of a tree. 

The little Spanish boys and girls were used to playing with balls made 
of rags and with pig's bladders, and you may imagine what a treasure were 
these bouncing balls of the Indians. But the men who sent out this second 
expedition did not give the rubber balls much thought and certainly no 
value. Since Columbus brought back no gold, he was thrown into prison 
for debt, and he never suspected how men, four hundred years later would 
turn that strange, gummy tree juice into more gold than King Ferdinand 
and Queen Isabella and all the princes of Europe ever dreamed of. 

In the next century after Columbus' travels, the Portuguese founded 




the colony of Brazil on the con- 
tinent of South America. Their 
settlements were near the coast 
and they did not begin to ex- 
plore the great Amazon region 
for a hundred years or so. The 
journey down this great river 
which Mr. Roosevelt took so 
many years later, was first made 
by a Portuguese missionary. Here 
he found the same gummy tree 
juice of the West Indies, but the 
natives had discovered that, be- 
sides being elastic, it was water- 
proof, and they were making shoes 
that would keep out water. You 
can imagine a native boy spilling some of this liquid on his foot, then covering 
it, as he might with a mud pie, and when it dried, wiggling his toes 
to find that he had the first and perhaps the best fitting rubber shoe that 
ever was made. 

Little by little samples of this new substance found their way to Europe. 
But it was another hundred years before thoughtful men believed it 
worth while to investigate this gum, and in 1731 the Paris Academy of 
Science sent some explorers to learn about it. One of these Frenchmen, 
La Condamine, wrote of a tree called "Heve." He said: " There flows from 
this tree a liquor tvhich hardens gradually and blackens in the air." 
He found the people of Quito waterproofing cloth with it, and the Amazon 
Indians were making boots which, when blackened in smoke, looked like 
leather. Most interesting of all, they coated bottle-shaped moulds, and 
when the gum had hardened, they would break the mould, shaking the 
pieces out of the neck, leaving an unbreakable bottle that would hold 
liquids. 

It was not long after that Lisbon began to import some of these crudely 
fashioned rubber articles, and it is said that, in 1755, the King of Portugal 
sent to Brazil several pairs of his royal boots to be waterproofed. ^ A few 
years later the Government of Para sent him a full suit of rubber clothes. 



NOTE: — Heve is a French word pronounced Bay-vay. 



But, for all that, this elastic gum was for the most part only a curiosity, and 
few people knew there was such a thing. 

About the year 1770, a black, bouncing ball of this caoutchouc, after 
many travels, found its way to England, and Priestly, the man who gave 
us oxygen, learned that it would rub out pencil-marks. Then and there he 
named it, what you have probably guessed long before this, rub-ber. Nearly 
every language except English uses some form of the native word, caoutchouc, 
which means, weeping tree. Aiter Priestly's discovery, one inch "rubbers" 
sold for three shillings, or about seventy-five cents each, but artists were glad 
to pay even that price, because it made their work so much easier. 

In 1800, Brazil was the only country manufacturing rubber articles, 
and her best market soon proved to be North America. Probably the first 
rubber this country saw was brought in New England clipper ships for 
ballast in the form of crude lumps and balls. Rubber shoe >, water-bottles, 
powder-flasks, and tobacco-pouches found buyers in the American ports, 
but rubber shoes were most in demand. 

Presently some Americans began to import raw rubber and to manu- 
facture rubber goods of their own, and a Scotchman named INIcIntosh found 
a way of vvaterproofing by spreading between two strips of cloth a thin sheet 
of rubtsr dissolved in coal naphtha. His name still jtands for raincoats 
to-day. This rubber clothing 
shared favor with rubber shoes, 
but its popularity was short- 
lived for it did not wear well 
and was ahnost as sensitive 
to temperature as molasses and 
butter. The rubber shoes and 
coats got hard and stiff in win- 
ter, and soft and sticky in sum- 
mer. A man wearing a pair of 
rubber overalls who sat down 
too near a warm stove soon 
found that his overalls, his chair, 
and himself were stuck fast to- 
gether. The first rubber coats 
became so stiff in cold weather 




NOTE; — Cacatchouc is a native South American word pronounced, kb^chuk. 



/ 



that, when you took one off, you could stand it u}) in the middle of the floor 
and go away and leave it, for it would stand like a tent until the rubber 
thawed out, and when thawed, it was almost as uncomfortable as is fly-paper 
to the fly. 

One day, Charles Goodyear, a Connecticut hardware merchant of an 
inventive turn of mind, went to a store to buy a life preserver. The only 
ones he could find were imperfect afi'airs, but they drew his attention to the 
study of rubber and presently he was thinking of it by day and dreaming of 
it by night. Rubber became a passion. He neglected his business and grew 
poorer than the turkey Job kept. He pawned his goods and borrowed from 
his friends until they dreaded to have him and his rubber talk enter their 



THEY BECAME 
STIFF IN COLD 
WEATHER, • • 





GOODYEAR. MAKES HIS DISCOVERY/ 



doors. He CA'en pawned his children's books to get money for his experi- 
ments. His family hardly dared walk into a room or sit down at a table for 
fear they would come upon some of his ever present gum, elastic, as he called it. 

With an inventor's tireless patience and endless hope, he tried one 
combination after another but they all failed. He had an entire suit of 
rubber clothes, and one of his friends once said. "Mr. Goodyear is the man 
you will see walking about all dressed in rubber, carrying a rubber purse 
with nothing in it." 

Finally, in 1839, when he was mixing some rubber and sulphur together, 
a thing he had often done before, he accidentally dropped a spoonful on the 



hot stove. Rubber melts at such a low temperature that he had never 
thought of applying great heat. Instead of melting, as he expected it 
,v ould do, it flattened out like a silver dollar. It bent and stretched easily 
.vithout cracking or breaking; it always snapped back to Hs original 
hape, and, strangest of all, it was no longer sticky. Appareiitly half the 
roblem was solved. Whether his new n.ixture would stand cold he had yet 
Lo find out, so he nailed it on the outside of the door and Went to bed. Prob- 
ably he slept but little and was up early to find his rubber quite unaffected 
by the cold. Then he knew that he had made a real discovery and he named 
the process "vulcanizing" after the Roman god of fire. "Vulcanizing" 
simply means, mixing sulphur and pure rubber and then applying heat. 

Two years passed before Goodyear could stir any one with faith 
enough to invest money in his discovery; but in 184-1 he was able to take out 
the first of more than sixty patents which were granted to him for applying 
his original process to various uses. Many times he fought for his rights 
in the courts, and m one of the most famous cases he was defended by 
Daniel Webster and opposed by Rufus Choate. 

Shortly after Goodyear discovered how to vulcanize rubber, he per- 
mitted, under his patent rights, L. Candee & Company of New Haven, 
and also the Goodyear INIetallic Rubber Shoe Company, to use his methods. 
In 184-1 the Goodyear India Rubber Glove Company also received the 
same permission. ^ Since then many companies have used the name 
Goodyear, but the three companies named above, all part of the United 
States Rubber Company, are the only ones who had direct connection 
with Charles Goodyear. 

From the moment of Goodyear's discovery, the successful future of the 
use of rubber was certain. Rubber, a laughing stock and a joke before that 
time, has turned the laugh into reverent respect, and now no family could 
be comfortable or happy without it. For baby there would be no teething 
ring, no nipple for his bottle, no hot water-bottle for his stomachache, no 
rubber doll, and no tires for his go-cart. You would have to give up your 
rain-coat, bicycle, baseball and football, to say notliing of the fifty thousand 
other things that make the manufacture of rubber one of the greatest 
industries of the world. 




OR the Aery first of the rubber story we may 
thank a fit tie wood-boring beetle, and the way 
nature has of helping her children to protect 
themselves. 

The thistle of the meadow is as safe from 
feeding cattle as though fenced in by barbed 
wire. A cow must be very hungry who would 
care to flavor her luncheon Avith the needles 
that the thistle bears. The common skunk 
cabbage would make a tempting meal for her 
after a winter of dry feeding, had not nature given it an odor that, disgusts 
spring brealvfast hunters. The milkweed welcomes the bees and flies that 
help to distribute her pollen where she wants it spread, but she has her 
own way of punishing the useless thieves that trespass up her stalk. ^A'here- 
ever the hooks of their feet pierce her tender skin, she pours out a milky juice 
to bedraggle the insect's feet and body, and it is a lucky bug that succeeds in 
escaping before this juice hardens, holding him a prisoner condemned to die. 
This latter protection is the way nature takes of giving us rubber. 
All over the world there are plants with the same ability that the milkweed 
has, but it is especially true of certain trees and vines of the tropics. As 
soon as a beetle- begins to bore into the bark of one of these tropical trees, 
the plant pours out a sticky, milky fluid that kills the insect at once. But if 
that were all, the wound would remain open, ready for the next robber 
who came along. In order that the break may be healed, a cement is neces- 
sary, but not a hard, unyielding one, for that would crumble away with the 
motion of the tree in the wind. So, with the perfection of Mother Nature's 
working, the very plant juice that has done duty as a poison is hardened 



into an elastic stopper, so that, no matter how- far the tree may sway and tug 
at the wound, the fiUing gives and stretches, true to the task it has to 
perform. 

This was the juice the crafty savage induced the tree to give up. Where- 
ever the hark was cut, the fluid poured forth to heal the break and hardened 
hke blood on a cut finger. The native, caught it while it was'still soft and 
applied it to his simple needs. 

Scientific men call this juice latex, but let us call it rubber milk, for it 
is similar to animal's milk in three ways; it contains tiny particles that rise 
to the top like cream, it spoils quickly, and it is pure white. 

The particles in cow's milk are full of fats which make it good for us to 
drink. But tree's milk has tiny atoms of rubber and resin and other things, 
and it took a long time to discover which of the three hundred and fifty 
rubber-producing vines and trees was the prize milker of the tropics and gave 
the largest amount of pure rubber. Finally, the Ilcrca, the very tree the 
Frenchman wrote about, proved to be the best and, although by no means 
the only tree of commercial value, it is acknowledged the greatest of rubber 
trees. 

This Hevea tree grows sixty feet high and when full grown, is eight 
or ten feet around. It rises as straight as an elm, with high branch- 
ing limbs and long, smooth, 

three-lobed leaves. Sprays of HEVEA ~ LEAVES <^W NUTS 
pale flowers blossom upon it 
in August and in a few months 
the seeds ripen, which resem- 
ble horse-chestnuts, only they 
are in three parts containing 
speckled seeds that look like 
smooth, slightly flattened nut- 
megs. The outer covering bursts 
with a lou I report, the seeds 
shooting in all directions. This 
is nature's clever scheme to 
spread the Hevea family. The 
tree grows wild in the hot, damp 
forests of the Amazon valley and 




"COTE: — Hevoa is a I-atinized form of Here, pronounced Hay-vah'^h. 



in other parts of South America that have the same chmate, wliich must 
be uniform all the year round, froiii eighty -nine to ninety-four degrees at 
noon, and never lower than seventy-three degrees at night. That trop- 
ical country has a rainy season which lasts half the year, though the other 
season is by no means a dry one, and so, for half tl^e time, the jungles are 
flooded, soft morasses which exactly suit the Hevea tree. 

These rubber storehouses had been growing for thousands of years 
in the Amazon jungle with their wealth securely sealed up in their bark, 
the peck of a bird, the 
boring of a beetle, or the 
scratch of a climbing 
animal being the only 
draft upon their treasure. 
The trees around the 
mouth of the river sup- 
plied whatever was needed 
for the little manufactur- 
ing that was at first done. 
But the discovery that 
made a universal use for 
rubber changed all this. 
Brazil was surprised to 
find what great treasure 
her forests contained. The large rubber tracts a thousand miles up the 
river were located, and she began in a more serious way to think of her 
rubber. 

Now let us drop three-quarters of a century 'that has passed since the 
demand for rubber began and follow a rubber gatherer of to-day while he 
collects the rubber mifk that makes sneakers and rubber tires and countless 
other necessities for you and for all of us. 

The amount of rubber taken out of Brazil each season is entirely a mat- 
ter of laborers. To get a rubber estate in the Amazon region is easy. The 
land costs nothing, only a small registration fee being charged by the gov- 
ernment. Life in the rubber districts is hard, the surrovmdings uncomfor- 
table, and the locations are remote, so rubber gathering is no easy jol), 
and laborers are not scrambling over each other for the privilege. Years 








when the dry season has killed 
the crops and thinned the cat- 
tle, so releasing men, are best 
from the aviadors poin^ of view. 
This aviador is a sort of go-be- 
tween or contractor who supplies 
the connecting link between the 
native laborer, his rubber, and 
the world market. He it is ^\ ho 
secures the workers, supj^lies 
them with what they need in the 
way of provisions and clothing, 
and advances money for the 
journey to the forests. 

Late iri March, or early in x\pril while the water is still high he loads 
his workers on river boats for a journey of perhaps a month or six 
weeks. Quarrelsome, monotonous days are those. Finally they reach 
the rubber region, and a number of men are dropped at each seringal. 
This is a tiny village, the center of the rubber operations for a certain 
area. The thatched huts of the workers or seringueiros cluster about 
the tile roofed house of the manager, the office, and store. Since the 
forests are not worked more than a mile inland, these seringals are 
always on the i-iver bank and on rising ground to escape the annual rising 
of the river waters. 




NOTES; — Aviador is pronounced ah-vt-e-ah-dor, and means contractor or employment agent. 
Seringals is pronounced say-nttg-gals, and means villages or encampments. 

Seringueitos is pronounce-! say-riiig-gay-ce-ros, and means rubber workers. It is not strictly a Portugese word 
but a colloquialism used in Brazil. 





ROM the lithe brown men that 
ashore, let us single out one, Pedro, half 
Portuguese and half Indian; he has his few 
possessions in odd shaped bundles, a red hand- 
kerchief around his neck, and a stiletto in his 
belt. Some of the seringueiros will work near the seringal center, but Pedro 
and his two or three companions tramp off to a distant hut which will be 
their home for the next six months. On a framework of poles, the thatched 
roof is mounted; a floor is raised well above the dampness, and the dwell- 
ing is made. There is plenty of ventilation for it is open on all sides. Some 
boxes and cooking utensils complete its furnishings. 

The first task of these men is to chop out the jungle paths of a year 
ago, for with the rising of the Amazon and the 
luxuriant growth of the tropics, they are entire- 
ly overgrown. There are hundreds of kinds 
of trees in the forest, tangled together with 
vines, and the Heveas may be from ten to 
seventy-five feet apart. So this path must 
be a sort of loop, connecting a hundred 
trees or more, and returning to the starting 
point. These paths are called estradas. Each 
man cuts perhaps two of these paths with a 
two-foot circle about each tree to give him 
room to work. 

Now he is ready for the tapping. The rub- 
ber milk runs best eai'ly in the day, so our man is 
up at four, and after a hasty swallow of coffee. 




vimo 



NOTES: — Pedro is pronounced Pay-dro. its English equivalent is Peter. 
Estradas is pronounced es~tra-das. and nr-ans paths. 



is on his way, supplied with a peculiarly shaped knife and several hundred 
tin cups about the size of paper drinking cups. 

When he comes to a Hevea, he finds it scarred in certain distinct lines. 
These are the remains of former tappings. In .tapping maple-trees for 
syrup, it is the saj) of the tree that you draw. But the rubber milk is dif- 
ferent for it is hidden in cells just under the bark, so the cutting must 
be carefully done, as the wooden heart of the tree must never be wounded. 

Ova* Pedro is a careful worker so he uses his knife skilfully, making a thh 
gash throughout the length of the old scar, at the bottom of each cut at 




taching one of his little cups. Tin cups have a bit of metal to bend over 
the bark. Pottery cups are attached by a piece of soft clay. When our man 
has been working a week or two, he knows his trees as well as the farmer boy 
knows his cows, whether they give thick mUk or thin, much or little. Some 
give ten or twenty times as much as others, and some go quite dry. 
The average yield of ^ mature tree is about six ounces a day, -enough to fill 
a baby's bottle. A good tree will average ten pounds of rubber in a j^ear. 

Back to his starting place, Pedro drops his knife and takes a pail, making 
the same round 'again, but this time emptying the cups, and perhaps it is 
ten o'clock when he staggers into his hut with a full milk pail and big ap- 
petite for breakfast of dried beef and beans which he must prepare for him- 
self. Although the jimgle is the home of many wild beasts and reptiles, 




SMOKING 
RUBBERj 
ON A PADDLE 



Pedro knows that they rarely trouble 
man, and he has no fear of them. His 
greatest inconvenience is probably hav- 
ing an occasional cup stolen by an in- 
quisitive monkej' who m^y later throw 
it down on his head. 

Breakfast over, Pedro starts on 
the real work of the day, for the 
morning's milk supply must be hard- 
ened for market immediately or it 
will spoil. Over a fire of wood and 
palm nuts he places a crude funnel with 
the snudl end at the top. Then he 
takes a paddle, something hke a child's 
sand shovel, dips it in the milk, and holds it over the thick, black smoke that 
is now pouring from the top of his little furnace. The milky coating soon be- 
comes a yellowish color, and he knows it is thoroughly dry. Again and again 
he dips the paddle into the milk imtil layer upon layer is dried and the 
morning's milk yield is used up. A practiced hand can, in this way, dry five 
or six pounds of rubber in an hour. 

A worker may start every day a new "pclle," or Ijiscuit, as the lump is 
called, but he is more likely to add to the first one. The farther up the river 
is the seringal, the larger the biscuits, 
for large ones are less apt to be lost 
in the long journey. The large bis- 
cuits are called hams and may weigh 
one hundred and fifty pounds. 

Saturday is market day in the 
seringal. Pedro and his companions 




SMOKING RUBBER, 
ON A POLE 



NOTE: — Pelle is a French word pronounced pell, and means shovel. 



load their week's rubber on their backs or into crude boats, bring it to 
headquarters to be weighed and credited, and return again with a week's 
stores and whatever gossip is to be picked up by the way. 

The rubber is shipped down to the aviador who sells it at auction. 
From the money that it brings, he takes twenty per cent, commission 
and some thing toward Pedro's debt to him, and the rest he sends back 
to our man. 

This is the daily life of the gatherer of wild rubber. The simple methods 
which he continues to use, year after year, have only recently been im- 
proved upon, for "fine Para rubber," collected in biscuits, smoked over 
palm nuts, and named from the Brazilian city where it is marketed, is 
still one of the highest grades of rubber. ♦ 




[T IS a hard thing, after having taken 
credit for something for a long time, 
to find that it does not belong to us 
at all. For a great many years America 
contentedly thought that she had given 
to the world three important things, Indian corn, tobacco, and rubber. But 
one day some one came back from a journey through the East with the re- 
port that there was a rubber belt around the uiorld ! By which he meant that for 
two hundred and fifty miles on either side of the equator, between the 
thirtieth parallels, was tlie kind of damp, hot weather where rubber-producing 
trees lived. 

Africa, as well as the tropical islands of the ocean, had many 



kinds of their own, and they all began to think they might have a part in 
rubbing the Aladdin's lamp that Brazil had found. 

For some tune, in fact, one-third of all the rubber used came from Africa, 
but its quality was poor. This was partly the fault of the trees which were 
different from the Hevea, but chiefly because the natives were careless. 
They would let the milk run down the side of the tree into a hollow, at most 
lining the hole with leaves, lettmg the sun harden the juice as best it might. 
Sometimes they would smear the milk over their own skins where the 

natural heat of the body would 



NATIVE AFRICAN WAY 
OF STRIPPING RUBBER 
FROM THE TREE 




harden it, and by night they 
were ready to tear off their 
rubber suits and make them into 
balls. Their idea was to get the 
most milk in the shortest time, 
whether it destroyed the tree 
was no concern of theirs. They 
would cut the trees down al- 
together, or, they would climb 
them, tearing the bark with 
deep gashes as they came down, 
afterward rubbing salt into the 
cuts to make the juice harden 
at once. Standing at the foot 
of the tree it was easy to rip 
this rubber for the length of the 
cut. These strings the savage 
wound into a ball which be- 
came so large, he must lie on his back to handle it, using his chest for a rest. 
But by far the most important rubber question in the East is that of 
the plantation. Cultivated rubber is only an infant industry, but in its 
brief forty years of life it has become so strong that its mother, ivild rubber, 
has good reason for worry lest she be altogether forgotten. 

Men ahead of their time are almost ahvays laughed at for fanatics and 
dreamers, and Mr. H. A. Wickham, an Englishman living in South America 
who believed in cultivated rubber, had his share of ridicule. He saw no reason ' 
why, with a like climate and soil, seeds put into the groimdbyhand should not 



have as much success as those shot from "seed cases far up in the tree boughs. 
Wicldiam planted some Hevea seeds* around his BraziUan home and 
started a sort of simple tree nursery. He wrote a book about his ideas 
which came into the hands of the Director of Kew Gardens in England and 
of an official of the Indian Government. These men thought his plan was 
worth trying, but for him to get the seeds out of South America was another 
prolilem. Even then Brazil was jealous of her monopoly, and had she 
known what kind of cargo the Amazonas carried down the river early in 1876, 




she would have had good reason to chase it with gunboats and bring it back. 

The task Avas not an easy one, for the seeds must be collected at the 
ripening season and, because they are so rich in oil and lose their vitality 
so soon, they had to be packed with the greatest care and with proper 
ventilation. At length Wickham got the seeds aboard a boat he was able 
to charter and finally landed them under the glass roofs of Kew Garden 
hothouses. In two weeks, seven thousand young Hevea trees had sprouted 
on the foreign soil of England, and it is the children and grandchildren 
of this brave company that to-day people the Eastern plantations with 
rubber trees. 

"\Mien these plants were strong enough, they were shipped in small 
glass-roofed boxes, well supplied Avith proper soil and moisture, to Ceylon, 
Singapore, and other British possessions. There they were planted in 

NOTE: — Amazonas is pronounced Ah-mah-tko-vas. 




Botanical Gardens where they 
had the greatest care and atten- 
tion. \Yhen tliese trees were 
tapped a few years later, the 
yield of milk proved Wickliam's 
dream to have the firmest kind 
of foundation in practical use. 

Now, I'ubber plantations dot 
the tropics almost everywhere 
that clunate and soil are right, 
especially in Ceylon, Malaya, 
Java, Sumatra and Borneo, as 
well as in the warm belt of South 
and Central America. It is not 
because there is fear of the wild rubber supply giving out that these planta- 
tions have been started, for there are, in the Brazilian forests alone, per- 
haps three hundred million trees still untouched. But it is so hard to get 
the rubber out, transportation is so poor, limited entirely' to the water- 
ways, and life in the undeveloped country is so unheal Lhful and uncomfort- 
able, that the wild product can never be sold as cheaply as we hope plan- 
tation rubber may be. And besides, cultivated rubber will come to market 
far cleaner and with much lower percentage of waste, for the modern 
rubber-drying houses are little less clean than a dairy. 

Although rubber planting has long past the experimental stage, the 
method of cidtivaticn is far from uniform, every planter's experience gi\ang 
him his own ideas. Most growers agree that well-weeded plantations without 
undergrowth are best, for this avoids the danger of fire which is almost 
impossible to control, once it is started in tropical brush. • 

The first five years of a plantation is a time of anxious waiting with 
need for great patience, for until the trees measure two feet in circimifer- 
ence three feet from the ground, they are not ready to be tapped. Then 
the yield is slow, not more than three quarters of a jiound of rubber coming 
from a tree in its first year. But it increases steadily and a thirty year 
old tree in Ceylon was known to give ninety -six and a half pounds in 1910. 
Life on a plantation is a very different thing from the forest scringaf 
of South America. The planter, a white man, has his bungalow, sometimes 



he has his family with him. The overseers and assistants are usually white 
men, too, who live together. Then there are long rows of laborers' houses 
the "quarters,"' where black and yellow children swarm with the broad acres 
of the plantation for a playground. 

As in the jungle, the rubber gatherers start soon after it is light, for 
the milk stops flowing a few hours after simrise. But it is not the lonely 
occupation of our poor Pedro, the seringueiro. The workers, men and 
women, come in groups from the quarters, gay in turbans and sashes, nose- 
rings and bangles, for the morning milking. Each one carries a tool, some- 
what like a chisel, with which to 
cut a shaving of bark, following 
the cut that he finds on the 
tree, and from which trickles the 
juice into the enamel cups placed 
for it. There are manj' ways of 
cutting, the V' the herring-bone, 
half herring-bone, the spiral, and 
others. Wild trees have a rest 

of half a year during the wet var ious ways of cutting 

season. Plantation milk is col- 
lected all the year through, but it is good to rest these trees also by tapping 
only on alternate days, or by gi^'ing them holidays of a week or more. 

Instead of the palm nut furnace of the Brazilian, we now have modern 
drying machinery. The first plantation method of diying rubber was to 
pour it into flat soup-plates. AYhen it had hardened into a dough or putty- 
like mass, it was rolled with a rolling-pin to squeeze out the water, and the 
round mats or doilies of rubber were hung on a line to dry. Now acid hurries 
the hardening in great pans from which the rubber is taken in dough-like 
lumps. These are put through rollers from which comes a sheet of "crepe" 
rubber, ready for drying and smoking, after which it is ready for market. 

After long journeys by boat, bullock cart, rail, and steamer, the crude 
rubber finally comes to its destination at one of the great world markets, 
London, Antwerp, or New York, where samples are taken, the dealers noti- 
fied, and it is finally auctioned for the best prices it will bring. Five-sixths 
of the world's rubber now comes from plantations, and nearly three- 
fourths of the entire world production is used in the United States. 





ROM the markets to the homes, and 
offices, and garages of the nation the 
adventures of rubber are too varied 
to be told in this story. , Goodyear's 
discovery was merely the beginning of 
making rubber practical. He, himself, experimented with it all his lifetime. 
During many years rubber was manufactured by guess, much as the South- 
ern mammy does her cooking. Now everj'^ rubber manufacturer has a great 
staff of scientific cooks, or chemists, who spend all their time hunting for 
new combinations. 

Mother probably has her special blend of cofifee that she prefers above 
all others. Father may insist upon a particular mixture of tobacco; so the 
rubber chemist must find a definite combination for every kind of use to 
which rubber is put. The reason some companies have better" goods than 
others is that their chemists have been able to discover better recipes. These 
recipes are the guarded treasures of the rubber men, for their manufacturing 
secrets are their real capital and arc worth thousands and even millions of 
dollars. 

Scientists are trying to make "sjmthetic" or artificial rubber, which 
is, to combiae in the laboratory the elements that make rubber, and so rival 
the methods of the great out of doors where INIother Nature uses the sun, 
the moisture, and the good, rich earth to bring forth a white, gummy tree 
juice. But this chemical rubber is verj?^ costly, and for a long time, at least, 
nature's product mil be cheaper and better. 

How important rubber has become we may gather from the laws 
Germany passed during the war, punishing any one who threw away an 



article made of rubber. Of all the privations which that besieged country 
was suffering, rubber was one of its most serious needs, so when the first 
merchant submarine, Deutschland, returned from its famous trip to this 
coimtry, it was rubber that largely made up the cargo. 

It is only eighty-five years since we have known how to use rubbei 
yet it would set us back more than a century in the comfort and business 
of living if it should suddenly cease to be. As the use of animal skins fo. 
shoes paved the world with leather, so the invention of pneumatic tire; 
and rubber soles and heels has cushioned the world with rubber. 

You could not go through a single day without the service that rubbei 
gives you. To be deprived of rubber bands, balls, buttons, buckles, oi 
combs, supporters, elastics, bandages, rain-coats, erasers, of fountain pens 
typewriters, motor trucks and motor cars, fire hose and factory belts ^ 
to mention just a few of the things rubber makes possible, would leav 
you wildly himting for substitutes in order to go on with your day's wort 
or pleasure. 

Yet, the rubber industry is still in its infancy, and we have told yov 
only the beginnings of what it wiU some day mean to us. Who knows which 
one of you, boys and girls now, will realize dreams of discovery and manu- 
facture that to-day seem only fantastic fairy tales of imagination? For 
the romance of rubber is only begun, and its wonder story of the future 
would thrill us all could we but hear it told. 




REVIEW^^OUESnONS 



HOW MANY CAN YOU ANSWER? 



What white man was first to 

see rubber? 
What did the natives use it 

for? 
Who was first to go up the 

Amazon? 
What royal person was first 

to use rubber? 
Where did it get its name? 
What were the first rubber 

articles America had? 
Why is a raincoat called a 

mackintosh? 
What is "vulcanizing"? 
What famous men fought 

over the patents in the 

courts? 
What has the beetle to do 

with rubber? 
Where does rubber come 
, from and Avhat is it? 
Is it like maple-tree sap? 
How many rubber produc- 
ing trees are there? 
What tree is considered best? 
"\MTiat climate does it need? 
What is meant by the rubber 

belt? 
What country long supplied 

the world's rubber? 



On what depends the amount 
of rubber annually taken 
out of that country? 

Who gets ihe laborers to- 
gether ? 

What is the rubber gather- 
ers' village called? 

^^Tiat is the rubber gatherer 
called ? 

What is his day's work? 

"Wliy is African rubber poor? 

How Avas rubber tamed ? 

What is tamed rubber called ? 

Why is it better than wild 
rubber? 

How are trees tapped? 

What proportion of the 
world's rubber now comes 
from plantations? 

Wliat proportion of the 
whole supply does the 
United States use? 

What is synthetic rubber? 
Wliy is it not practical? 

Why are some xnanufactur- 
ers' goods better than 
others ? 

What actions of Germany 
during the war show the 
regard that country had 
for rubber ? 

How long have we known 
about rubber? 




■■■ f.. 



\yiG/ice ^o le^tc/iers 



THESE booklets are intended' 
for presentation to your 
pupils. A full supply wil'l be 
sent to you, free of charge, if 
you will indicate the number of 
children in your class. 

Please address 

Educational Department 

United States Rubber Company 

1790 BROADWAY 
New York City 



Si'Jf'iTO 



LIBRARV OF CONGRESS 




018 376 582 6 




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